Fire Guts UNILAG Medical Students’ Hostel

BUT for Providence and timely intervention of the students, Block C of Alliakilu Hostel, located at College of Medicine, University of Lagos, would have been totally razed by fire that began in the hostel in the early hours of yesterday.

According to one of the students, it took over an hour to put out the fire, which wassaid to have been ignited by an electrical fault.

Men of the fire service later arrived to quench the fire, which started at 10.00a.m.from Room 648 of the Male Hostel and later spread to Room 647 of the same hotel, located at the third floor.

When The Guardian visited the two rooms, everything belonging to students were burnt.

An affected student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity said all he had, including N25,000 given to him by his parents for the new session, had gone in the fire.

He blamed the school authorities, which he alleged refused to rectify an electrical fault in the hostel, adding that several complaints on the matter to the college management had not yielded any ositive result.

He said the college’s instruction, which banned students from bringing external electrician to hostels, had not helped matters.

The medical student, who looked dejected, urged the college authorities to intervene in students’ faulty electrical complaints as other hostels in the college were facing similar problems.

Mr. Daniel Timson, another student, told The Guardian that unavailability of water on the affected floors almost frustrated their rescue efforts as students had to run to the ground floor several times to get water to quench the fire.

The fire burnt ceilings, medical books, laptops, ipads, mobile phones, and blackberries, thousand of nairas, fans, beds, foams, and clothes, cooking utensils among others belonging to the students.

A top official of the school told The Guardian that some students used the opportunity to loot property, including laptops and phones.

Some of the affected students were seen squating with their colleagues when The Guardian visited, just as some parents who heard trooped in to see their wards.

The College of Medicine’s Public Relations Officer (PRO), Mr. Sunday Odejimi, who confirmed that the fire started at 10.00 a.m. while most of the students were out for lectures, said the school authorities would look into the cause of the fire with an intention to prevent a reoccurrence.

Odejimi blamed the students for “taking liberty for granted” and for not reporting the dangerous electrical fault to the appropriate authorities, including the Students’ Union Government (SUG), who would have reported to the school management to correct the faulty electrical part in the hostel.

The spokesman said the school would relocate the affected students until repairs were done in the affected rooms.